


I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

by NikoArtagnan



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drabble Collection, Gen, Mental Disintegration, Mental Instability, Original Character(s), Other, Psychological Horror, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, blue and orange morality, minor crossover with another fanfic, not nearly as dark as its namesake, the si-oc no one saw coming, though it's still pretty messed up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-19 10:14:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7357144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NikoArtagnan/pseuds/NikoArtagnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>In the void, a monster opens its eyes. And so do I.</i> [OC-Insert!Gedō Mazō]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Awakening

* * *

**I.**

Something screams.

Something tears.

The pain is immense.

Wailing.

Wailing.

 _Wailing_.

Why?

 

**II.**

There is Silence.

Not silence, but.

Silence.

It deserves the Capital Letter.

 

**III.**

Breathe in, breathe out

 breathe in

  breathe out

   breathe

    in

     breathe

out-

who…

who am I?

 

**IV.**

There is darkness and pain and nothing and I-

for I am truly an ‘I’, an existence _beyond_ the darkness (I hope)

-can’t

-move.

I _scream_.

But my mouth makes no sound.

 

**V.**

The air is cold.

Or maybe that’s just me.

I am cold.

(just wishful thinking, wishful thoughts, when I do not even know if I am alive or dead-

if I even truly _exist_ -)

The air is cold.

I wish I had a blanket.

 

**VI.**

Memories.

They flicker.

There are ones where I am great and powerful.

There are ones where I hold two children in my arms.

There are ones where I dance like death given human form.

But there are also ones where I sit, and watch people dance on a screen and laugh with friends I cannot see and put weird things in my mouth and chew them and-

I have a Mother and a Father who love me and I have words and I move-

The memories where there is no blood and death and screaming screaming _screaming_ -

I prefer those.

 

**VII.**

I hear people.

A man.

No, not a man.

 _Mother_ , it says to me, with the reverence of a worshiper to their God.

I am not alone.

I am alive.

The other presence, it whispers endearments.

 _I’ll free you, Mother_.

The hope is staggering.

Let me feel the blue sky and taste the air and drink the stars let me breathe again I can’t breathe it hurts I want to be free help me please Zetsu-

 

**VIII.**

It’s gone.

I can’t feel the other presence, and I want to wail.

 _Evil_ , something whispers to me. _Evil. Black and White Zetsu_.

(Things danced on the screen, thousands of creatures, a plan made by a madwoman to come back to life-)

The memories flicker and die like mayflies.

My son.

The longing is all I feel.

Set me free I want to be free- 

 

**IX.**

Someone calls me.

I must answer.

Freedom taunts me.

Freedom, but not _freedom_.

I am chained.

This is worse than the void.

There, I was numb.

Here, freedom is just beyond my fingertips.

 

**X.**

There are more people.

I feel the energy – familiar, _minemineminemine_ – but I care more for the spirits.

Children. So young. So hurting.

The first – blue fire like death, _I was never anything more than a pawn, no one will mourn me when I’m gone_ – I reach out and grasp.

She flickers with her grief.

I would mourn, I whisper to her. Stay with me, little one. Stay with me.

There are others – fainter emanations of pink crackling stone, bubbles floating in the sky, red hot rage, billows of wet heat, flickering wings than the other Spirits – and I take them all.

My children, as much as the other presence who left me alone in my chains.

I want to see them live.

Their lives, stolen.

By me.

By me.

By me.

(There is another voice, and I ram against it, I have broken it, but it still holds me, I cannot move, I cannot resist-)

Their bodies sink into the earth at my feet, and I cradle them in my roots.

When I am free, I promise them all, you will live again.

_I promise._


	2. Listening

* * *

**XI.**

I can feel others using my energy.

My energy, _minemineminemine_.

I will make them pay.

All of them.

_Zetsu where are you it_ hurts

 

**XII.**

There was a man, long before.

He was the one who called me.

He was the first to bind me.

He connected himself to me, and it was through him-

I opened my eyes and felt the air _move_.

 

**XIII.**

I hated him and I loved him in equal measures.

He gave me the air on my skin, he gave me sounds and other spirits, eventually.

He let me know that Zetsu had not abandoned me.

(My son my son my son my son my darling son)

But he kept me bound, kept me bidden to him.

I was a prisoner, wrapped chains, forced to listen to him.

_I will kill him first, when I am free._

 

**XIV.**

Madness flirts at the edges of my senses.

I used to have fun playing games where the truly mad became monsters in their white straightjackets and terrorized the sane because it was fun and I had so much _fun_.

Am I one of the monsters, now?

I don’t want to be.

I want to be free.

That’s all I want.

 

**XV.**

Zetsu whispers endearments to me in the dark of night, where the man cannot hear.

_It’ll just be a little while longer, Mother,_ he says.

_Madara is doing so well, Mother,_ he says.

_You’ll be free, Mother_ , he says.

My son is so good to me.

 

**XVI.**

Madara’s thoughts twist and twine and try to corrupt mine.

His memories try to supplant the memories of Mother and Father and my sons and my friends who played games on the TV and the computer with me and that-

I would kill him for that and that alone.

And, I tell myself-

It will be _painful_.

 

**XVII.**

There’s a boy.

Madara’s plans are visible to me, laid out flat and plain and simple to my eyes, and I know what is to come, and I stave off the madness and the invasive memories he has by picking through them.

Nagato.

But later, there is-

Obito.

I could stop this. I could stop this and save a girl and save a village but-

I won’t.

I don’t.

 

**XVIII.**

Madara plans and plans and plans.

Then he trains the boy, the boy named Obito who becomes Tobi and who breaks in half like Nagato will when the one he loves dies.

But unlike Nagato-

-Obito doesn’t know that his beloved Rin died because of him.

There’s irony.

(I cradle the girl’s body in my roots, and I look at her, and I think – you look like me, or maybe the me of before. And then I think-

you will be useful to me, Nohara Rin’s body.)

 

**XIX.**

Madara is dying.

And all I can think is-

One step closer to freedom.

One more step.

One more step.

 

**XX.**

The man crumbles to ash and the boy looks up at me and smiles.

His mask is a spiral.

And I want to _eat_ him.


	3. Knowing

* * *

**XXI.**

The pain will kill me.

I scream and scream and scream and screamscreamscream _scream-_

No one listens.

My children scream with me, I try to shield them as my energy is torn from me.

I can’t I can’t I can’t I’m so sorry I’m so sorry-

_YugitoYaguraRōshiHanUtakataFū-_

my children my children my children.

_ShukakuMatatabiIsobuSonGokūKokuōSaikenChōmei-_

forgive me please.

_GaaraBeeNarutoGyūkiKurama-_

I keep failing you all.

_Hamura-_

_Hagoromo-_

 

**XXII.**

It stops it stops it stops thank god-

 

**XXIII.**

There is a voice.

A boy.

I recognize it.

He called me, so long ago, called me with grief and love in his heart, with the aching wail of-

_YahikoYahikoYahikoYahiko I love you please I killed him I killed him no please anyone make them PAY_

-and I came to him because I remembered that grief in my flickering memories.

And I brought more spirits to me, but not spirits like the ones I have now.

Not like my children.

 

**XXIV.**

He calls to me again.

This time, he whispers.

_Please let me save them please let me do this thing for this boy who will change the world_

_Please_

_Please-_

All right, I whisper.

Okay.

Okay.

Call my name again, Nagato.

 

**XXV.**

_Gedō: Rinne Tensei no Jutsu!_

 

**XXVI.**

I reach out with my roots and pull the boy into them-

And I whisper-

_MINE_

(I can SPEAK)

 

**XXVII.**

I feel his soul flickering and I cradle it and I whisper to it-

_DID YOU REALLY THINK I WOULD NOT BE ANGRY, NAGATO?_

His soul trembles, shaking-

There is power, in souls.

Power I need.

Power my _children_ will need.

 

**XXVIII.**

I eat him.

 

**XXIX.**

I shouldn’t have done that.

There’s a voice inside me that screams alongside my memories-

_You just ate a human being!_

-and I wish I could make it be quiet.

It’s just a soul.

Just a soul of someone worthless.

And he deserves it.

I see a little boy standing in a black cloak with red clouds and there’s an orange haired boy at his feet and there’s a girl with blue hair at his side and he’s screaming like his heart will be broken forever-

_He deserves it._

 

**XXX.**

The man is dead and the boy is dead (in my coils) and now-

Now there is another, the boy the man saved and damned all in one breath.

_Obito_ , the voice that is not mine but is, the voice that replaced the holes in me, mourns. _Oh, Obito._

This is the one who tries to take what is not his and he will not he will not he _will_ **_pay-_**

_I must be FREE._


	4. Falling

* * *

**XXXI.**

I was born into a family who look like me - a mother, a father, a brother, two sisters - all white haired and white skinned and white eyed.

These are the truths I know: my mother is a wonderful singer, my father rules the land from our palace, my brother will one day take our father’s place, and my sisters all look to me for guidance because they cannot rely on our mother.

But this is not the truth.

It is not a lie either.

 

**XXXII.**

I was born into a family of people who look only a little like me – a mother, a father, and far too many cats – and we all live in a house in the woods.

These are the truths I know: my mother and I have dark hair that grays too early and glasses that are too thick, my father’s hair is straight and thick and his temper strikes like mine does, and my cats make me sneeze but I love them.

This is more of a truth.

But it still rings of a lie.

 

**XXXIII.**

My powers are great and terrible and they come at a terrible price–

My beautiful stupid mother, my heartless king of a father, my brother who never thought he could be hurt, my sisters who followed me like sheep…

They are the price is takes for my eyes to finally open.

I write my family’s names in the blood of the burning palace, and then, in the wreckage of my life, I go-

- _Elsewhere_.

 

**XXXIV.**

I have no powers, no abilities. I am overweight and asthmatic.

(But I am _loved_ , and this is what keeps me going)

My mother with her grey-white hair and laughing eyes, my father with his curling dark hair and his working man’s hands, our cats with darkorangewhitespotted fur who curl around my legs…

In a storm, I tell my mother I love her through the phone I hold to my ear, I tell my father I love him, and I hear the winds over their screams, their pleas for me to be safe.

Then the winds come for me.

They snatch the roof from the house, they snatch the door from the room I am huddled in, they snatch my feet from the floor-

They snatch the air from my lungs-

the light from my eyes.

 

**XXXV.**

There is another world another life another family.

I want a family, and a family is what I will have.

A man gives me my children, and I feel happy-

But it is taken away from me. War comes again, I cannot breathe, I _cannot_ lose everything again.

 

**XXXVI.**

I tried.

I tried to keep the world happy, but I-

It was mine.

They did not deserve it.

It was mine.

(But they were our sons.)

It was _mine_.

 

**XXXVII.**

The madness rages and I.

I eat and eat but the Hunger, gods-

The Hunger never abates.

 

**XXXVIII.**

The coldness comes, and the numbness, and the last thing I see is-

_Hagoromo-_

_Hamura-_

I am so sorry.

 

**XXXIX.**

I scream and scream and scream in my chains, and the Memories-

Oh, the Memories-

I am…

I am not the Her that my Memories insist I am, but I am not entirely the Person my Memories said I Was, and I am so tired, and it hurts to keep fighting.

I am, I was.

I am (not), I was (never).

There is a line there, and I crossed it-

_was shoved over it_

-a long, long time ago.

 

**XL.**

What is truth?

What is lie?

They mix and meld together in my head, until I do not know anything, not even my own name. I do not know what was real, what had been real, and what may be real still.

But these are the truths that I do know: Once upon a time, I was loved, I hated, and I was happy.

Once upon a time, I had a family, I had children, and I had walked free.

I know love and hate, and they keep me from the darkness that could consume me, if I let them.

But there is another truth inherent in those ideals, and one I do not like to hear: My edges have already vanished to the darkness.

(I’ll never get them back)

Make something of the worn edges, smooth them plane, sculpt a new person from the darkness and death and remembered bits of love from a mother probably long dead-

She taught me love for her child, and so in turn I give love to my children, to the spirits I cradle. She took a bullet for me, once, in a robbery gone wrong but not tragic-

She taught me this: protect your children and give them the world.

(I will give them _everything_.)


	5. Rising

* * *

**XLI.**

Beyond the bodies of my children, there is one other that I keep perfectly preserved, perfectly restored, the gaping hole in her chest healed, her new heart beating once more-

Her hair is long and brown, and still it grows, but that’s fine.

I can cut it once I’m free.

 

**XLII.**

The boy brought her to me – with a heart broken and damned by grief – and her soul came with him, yelling _ObitoObitoObito I’m right here why can’t you hear me?!_

He did not hear her.

But I did.

 

**XLIII.**

Little fly, come into my parlor-

She came willingly.

Curious girl, curious spark of life.

Such a curious soul.

 

**XLIV.**

I talked to her.

I do not know what she thought I was, perhaps a god, or the Shinigami, or The God.

(Even now that I have died I still do not know if there are Gods or just one-

But it seems the Buddhist way of things is how it goes, or maybe that’s just how it is for me.)

She talked back, little lost soul, little brave girl, and I cradled her in my arms and sang old and new songs to comfort her in her grief.

But I was too eager for the softness of her, for the comfort of her kindness and the way she whispered back when I hummed.

I was too eager for the kindness that was hard learned, and even for the falseness that had been stripped away above it. I was too eager for the oh so familiar need to be more, frustrated even in death.

I was too eager.

A lesson to be learned, for me, when my children would come in the far distance.

Don’t grip too tight to the things you…love?

Is it love?

Ahhhh…who knows.

 

**XLV.**

I grasp too tightly, and held too stubbornly-

I was desperate, you see.

I was _aching_ for it, an echo of the greed that had ruled me when I was white-haired and had enough rage to fell continents-

Aching for anything that reminded me of goodness and kindness after years yokeled to a madman.

But the girl’s memories are not consumed, and neither is her soul, and I did not eat her-

I _could_ not.

Instead her soul and the parts of my soul – the one from before the winds came – they linked together, smoothing over the holes torn like jagged mesh.

Bits and bits of her replace the holes, until there was nothing left.

 

**XLVI.**

…I am born to a mother who drinks too much and calls me a fool.

We live in a house in a village called Konoha, run by a military dictatorship-

_but who in their right minds would call it that? Konoha is such a nice place, such a_ good _place_

-and I go to school to learn how to kill other children like me, other children from other villages.

I am a bitter, angry girl, but I learn early on how to hide my thoughts and feelings behind a smile.

I wanted to be a healer, you see?

But the world decided it was war that was needed, and good shinobi know they must fight for their village, even if I wished I could heal, instead.

Apathetic coolness, quiet sarcasm, false smiles – three lifetimes, three different ways of giving a resounding _fuck you_ to the people who demanded more from us than they ever thought to give.

(My family, my dream, my _life_.)

My mother dies in a pool of urine and alcohol.

It takes more out of me to cry at her funeral than it ever did to smile.

 

**XLVII.**

But, with him, I can smile.

I can smile for real.

(He’s like a little lost bird, and I go to him, and he smiles at me like the sun)

Did you know, Obito?

That my greatest regret was never saying _yes_ to you?

My hero, who came for me? My hero, who made me want to be one?

I knew. I knew you loved me, but it was _easier_ , liking someone who never thought of love in that way, could never-

But perhaps it is for the best.

(Who knows what you would have done, if I had died with your love requited?)

 

**XLVIII.**

Power is addicting, power is cool bright energy that slip slides through me, but stays just out of my grasp-

Power is kept from me by seals and the voice that says _betray Konoha_ -

I hear someone wailing in pain and endless grief, and I think with despair _I could have been something_ , even as I throw myself in front of the blinding – dying – light.

The power to be something more than the nuisance my mother always said I was.

Power is addicting. It could have been mine.

It should have been mine.

(I wonder later, at the folly of Orochimaru and Shimura Danzō, and how a girl like me managed to fool them all. What would I have done, under their tutelage? What would I have _accomplished_?)

 

**XLVIX.**

Obito makes a deal with a madman and I can do nothing to stop him, nothing to tell him what truly happened to me-

There’s a voice, and a presence, in the great statue, and it calls to me-

_Rin_ , it says.

_Hello, Rin._

(there’s power here, and it calls to me, the potential for it, and I move along with the great hands that clasp me, because if I could not have power in life, well – there’s always death)

 

**L.**

Life, purpose, power.

Three lifetimes, three failed attempts at becoming _more_.

Three failed attempts, reborn in a statue that screams silently, unless it is permitted to wail into the darkness alone.

(what do _you_ think could come of that?)

I laugh and laugh and laugh-

but my mouth makes no sound.


	6. Enduring

* * *

**LI.**

Like Eve sampling the fruit of Eden, you ate that which should never have belonged to you, and changed the world in your wake.

Hunger did not drive you, though you called it that, to make the mindless avarice and violence more palatable, to make all that you did in search of-

In search of what?

Who knows?

 

**LII.**

The irony of it all is this: you consumed the fruit and it was bitter-

And for a moment you were disappointed.

_How could the power of the Heavens taste like sadness and regrets_?

(but power without love or compassion or kindness – and sometimes even with it – is always bitter, you will eventually learn, on the day your sons bind you)

You ate all of the chakra you could find, ate and ate and ate because that was what the tree told you, whispered to you in your dreams. You ate until your stomach rebelled, but the taste was disgusting and putrid and raw, and grew still more so.

 

**LIII.**

Perhaps a naïve fool would have believed it simple hunger that drove you, perhaps a simpleton incapable of seeing past the façade would think it only the mindless hungering for flesh and bone and energy-

But you can’t hide from me, I who share a mind, a body, a _soul_ with you.

It was power you sought, and power at any cost. Power for _yourself_.

You were just like the humans you condemned, in the end.

Weren’t you, oh Rabbit Goddess?

 

**LIV.**

Why was I allowed to remain the clearest of the three?

The girl was torn asunder to mend the breaks, the goddess shattered to make the foundation, while I sat and watched and was kept whole.

(at least somewhat)

Was it Fate? Some divine choice?

Or did I simply slip through the cracks?

 

**LV.**

The boy comes, finds the body I had hidden.

Let him take it.

(Goodbye, Nagato)

Let him, in his hubris, believe he can make the world to fit himself.

(The irony is this: his hands come mere feet away from the body of his beloved Rin, as he reaches mindlessly for the power that never belonged to him.)

 

**LVI.**

Believe what you want, about heroes or villains or anyone in between, but the truth is this: greed makes the world go round.

I know this.

_I’ve seen it._

 

**LVII.**

I am called the battlefield, at the behest of the boy.

I am called, and I kill, and my anger grows and grows, my hate and rage-

Greed drove Kaguya, frustration drove Rin-

What drives me?

_Freedom_ , I think, and the thought of that word could drive me mad.

Centuries, it has been.

Just a little longer.

_Just a little longer._

 

**LVIII**

Someone tries to take my children from me.

I can feel them, speaking with another spirit.

No.

No.

I cannot be left alone again.

I will not be left alone again.

I pull my children back in, all of them, and I grip them tight-

_YOU WILL NOT LEAVE ME I WILL NOT BE ALONE!_

 

**LIX.**

Still I lumber on, in the grip of the boy.

But I can feel the wind, over my wooden skin.

I can hear the cries of people, like the shrill shrieks of ants.

 

**LX.**

But then I hear someone speaking, and his voice is clear, like a bell ringing, and my children react to him, reaching towards him the way flowers reach towards the sun.

Water pours through me for a single, curious second.

And I am standing in the branches of a great tree, while a woman in white sleeps like the dead on my right, while a girl in black curls up on my left. My children, arranged below me.

I am the only one awake.

But then the voice is gone and the sky and the tree is gone and I am alone in the darkness and the numbness-

I scream and scream and scream-

There’s an agonizing pain-

Redness, pain, and-

_IT IS TIME._


	7. Undoing

* * *

**LXI.**

I wanted him dead before, but for this agony I will write the songs of a thousand screams on his flesh-

 

**LXII.**

Power twists inside me, like millions of moths are bursting into flame and slamming into my flesh, over and over and over again-

I clutch the sides of my head, screaming.

 

**LXIII.**

I open a dozen eyes and scream with a thousand tongues for mercy that never comes.

 

**LXIV.**

Trying to force a jigsaw piece into a hole that doesn’t fit, mash it in with a child’s impatience in the hopes that what results will match your standards, is that what you want, Obito-

 

**LXV.**

_I will not be denied my freedom._

 

**LXVI.**

I reach out, and grip white skin and a shattered mind, and pull them into me, into myself.

Step one, to the end, I think, before my world turns sideways.

 

**LXVII.**

I face a woman dressed in white rags, her mind broken. My children sit in the seats of the arena around us, both human and bijū alike, all of them asleep.

Who is the puppet, in this equation? I ask the remnants of Ōtsutsuki Kaguya. And who the master?

_I will destroy you and take my rightful place!_

Wrong answer, I tell her, cheerfully. I made a promise, you see, to our children. And I must be in control to do so. But don't worry! You'll get to help.

_I will kill you!_

I laugh and shake my head.

That’s not up to you, I say, and gesture to the side.

There’s a girl standing there. Her hair is brown. Her eyes are brown.

Her smile is so polite.

Hello, Rin.

**LXVIII.**

_It’s our choice,_ Rin says, so softly, so sweetly. _Isn’t it?_

It is. It always was, sister.

She smiles at me, like I’m the realization of all of her dreams and hopes.

She’s not nearly as broken as Kaguya, and I realize then that she _permitted_ me to take her, to rip tiny bits of her soul away and use them to repair mine. We are so much alike.

(couldn’t get power on my own, so find someone else who _can_ )

I meet her halfway, and I take her hand.

_You made me wait._

Haha…I apologize for that, I say. I didn’t even know I could do this, to be honest.

We reach out, together.

There are hooks the color of blood and flesh and the color of the river of the dead, as inevitable as the flow of the river Styx itself, and they drag Kaguya screaming to us.

(why is she so weak before us? who knows? who cares? opportunity is opportunity, after all)

_Do we really have to?_

It’s for the best.

(her hunger rocked the world funny isn’t it that she’ll be eaten in turn _it’s nothing personal_ )

Then there are teeth.

And then there is blood.

 

**LXIX.**

The world is nothing but a melding twisting darkness, lingering with Kaguya’s defiant ~~desperate~~ screams and the feeling of Rin’s hand in mine as I sit on a throne of thorns.

Then even that is gone, and I am simply a presence in the darkness once again, but this time I am _more_ -

 

**LXX.**

Brown eyes fight to open in the darkness.

Power _moves_.

The Jūbi howls.


	8. Breaking

* * *

**LXXI.**

we can see, we can see _everything_ -

 

**LXXII.**

Our children, they are there, they are not with us, only faint wisps, they should be with _us_.

The boy with the clear water voice that rang through us is there, with others who are not as important.

_Naruto_ , we whisper, with the reverence of a god.

_Naruto?_ Our children sing inside us, calling for him. _Naruto!_

Bright song, bright light, bright one-

We want to tell him hello, but the _pests_ won’t let us-

 

**LXXIII.**

I can _feel_ you, you know-

 

**LXXIV.**

Almost time, almost time-

Fists begin to beat a steady rhythm in my heart.

_Let me out!_

 

**LXXV.**

We feel the presences of others, as our body is battered and smashed, and the _pests_ attached to us stagger.

They intend to use our energy to fuel their war, they will _not_.

We pull-

(what use are spirits set free if we cannot have them for energy to break the chains? what use are they if they cannot be used to heal our children’s bodies and souls? what use?)

And the energy is a soft stream, not the colossal wave they demanded.

We are bound, still, but-

Soon.

_Soon_.

 

**LXXVI.**

There are cracks, cracks-

Do you know what they say, about a crack in a dam?

_It’s only a matter of time before the water finds a way out._

 

**LXXVII.**

The pain can be withstood.

The pain can be fought through, now that we are so close.

The screams of the one we ate quiet too, as we slam against the barriers, all together.

 

**LXXVIII.**

The roots that dig deep in the ground begin to move.

We will have to wait, to put my children back in their bodies.

We pour power – as much as can be stood – into the one that wait, slowly diverting the stream.

The anticipation is beyond belief, beyond comprehension.

 

**LXXIX.**

We feel ourselves turning, twisting-

We are becoming a tree.

Finally, we think.

It is finally time.

Three voices, twined as one, roar in the depths of darkness:

_“ŌTSUTSUKI KINSHŪ: SHINJU NO TAMASHĪ!”_

(come forth, o' tree of souls)

Energy pours in from those caught in our roots, pours down to the one waiting below.

In the darkness, brown eyes snap open.

(I can SEE)

Step two-

_Find the eyes. Take them for our own. We need them._

 

**LXXX.**

_The heavens shake._

_Roots explode from the soil, bearing a flower up from somewhere deep underground._

_Its leaves are the deep red of old blood that slowly turns new, gleaming under the light of the moon._

_The Jūbi’s body is consumed utterly, a tree rising up to take its place._

_Energy pours into the tree, the ground becoming dull and cracked. Anyone stupid enough to be caught on the ground collapses, their body encased by roots, chakra flowing from them like a river to the flower that awaits._

_And the flower, with its petals as red as blood, large enough to hold a human within, begins to open._


	9. Seeing

* * *

**LXXXI.**

Now separate from the others I have become an intrinsic part of, I open my eyes, and look skyward.

...The sky is clouded by dust. I can’t see the stars.

Tears trickle down my face.

 

**LXXXII.**

A voice, speaking to me:

“R-Rin-chan?”

I look over – men watch me, horror on their faces. I recognize them.

_Kakashi-kun._

_Minato-sensei._

_Obito._

There are others, but they are unimportant.

“Maaa,” I say, and smile. “You’ve gotten older. Kakashi-kun. Sensei. Obito.”

Memories flicker like moths on the insides of my eyes. I want to go to them, to wrap my arms around them.

I want them to smile at me, too, instead of looking at me like I am a monster.

I’m better, now, don’t you understand?

I’m stronger.

You don’t have to mourn me any longer.

_…why won’t you smile at me?_

 

**LXXXIII.**

“Rin, how, why-”

Obito looks so shocked. It’s adorable.

I smile at him. It’s vaguely annoying that he won’t smile in return.

Not very polite of him.

 

**LXXXIV.**

“Who the hell is she?”

 _Naruto_.

At the sound of his clear-water-bright voice, I remember. I still have work left to do.

The energy of my (our) children burns inside me, and that other part of me that I left behind to finish nags incessantly-

Okay, okay.

I’ll hurry.

I smile, and call soundlessly for Zetsu.

His reply is reverent in its confusion, but immediate all the same.

(my son is such a good boy)

 

**LXXXV.**

The seals on my flesh are the product of years of work-

it staved off madness, the memories say to me, your flesh was such a willing canvas

-and as I disrobe, they glow with the light of the moon.

“R-Rin-chan!”

Obito sounds almost scandalized.

How adorable.

Don’t worry, my darling.

I’ll tell you all the things I was too weak, too stupid, too selfish, to ever let you and Kakashi know.

Just be patient with me.

 

**LXXXVI.**

_Rin gleams in the moonlight as the roots force away anyone who tries to get near her. The seals on her naked flesh are unknowable, undecipherable, in languages no one living today know, and her hair blows around her ankles in the wind._

_Minato flickers-_

_Gets past the roots and stops in front of Rin._

_She halts, and looks at him, very curiously._

_“Rin-chan, you need to come with us, and put your clothes back on,” Minato says, tries to order, and she hums._

_“Why?”_

_“Rin-chan, we’re in the middle of a war-” His voice is vaguely exasperated, and that’s his mistake, to treat her as if she's still his student, as if she's still a child, because that's how he's always treated her._

_But it had always been this way before._

_After all, how could anyone who knew her have believed that Nohara Rin would do anything but obey? How could anyone have ever believed that Nohara Rin would strike at her beloved Sensei? How could anyone have ever thought that Nohara Rin could be a threat?_

_She hasn't attacked anyone, hasn't done anything to them, so maybe he's right, to believe this again, because Obito's alive and-_

_“Minato-sensei, for what it’s worth,” Rin says, in that easy, nonchalant tone she used when the four of them had ramen at Ichiraku’s. “I’m sorry it came to this.”_

_“Rin, wha-”_

_“Gedō: Kyūin_ _Ryū,” Rin says, her hands flickering faster than they ever had when she was younger._

 _(Absorption Dragon – she remembers this, it is one of her first memories of power, of true power while she was with the other voices, the Voice lifted her up as Nagato cried in the bloody rain and said look what you could have, if you would only help me, darling,_ wonderful _Rin-)_

_An ethereal purple dragon bursts from her mouth, roaring soundlessly in triumph._

_(But this isn’t Nohara Rin, not entirely, not anymore, and not even the Yellow Flash can outrun his regrets-)_

_The attack is too fast, too unexpected, and Minato crumples, his soul and chakra sucked out in an instant, and the dragon crashes back into Rin as she opens her arms to welcome it._

_The roots toss the rapidly decaying body flickering with ashes out of the woman’s way._

_And she keeps walking._

_“SENSEI!”_

_“DAD!_ NO _!”_

 

**LXXXVII.**

Naruto’s scream breaks my heart.

But he should know it was all for the best. Minato-sensei was _supposed_ to have been dead, after all.

(Bitterness rolls through me – he could have saved us all, he could have, but he didn’t, and I’ve never forgiven him - Kakashi hates himself, Obito hates the world, but I’m more practical in these things, always have been)

I’m going to bring his brothers and sisters back, after all.

And I’m going to be free.

I hear Obito scream, and he goes down, eyeless, blind.

Obito, no-

But Zetsu rises up in front of me and I smile at him, and reach out a hand, and he gives me the Rinnegan – two of them, perfect, perfect, perfect. He even found the one Obito hid.

( _such_ a good boy)

 

**LXXXVIII.**

The eyes taste like sadness and regrets as I slide them down my throat, and as Zetsu curls himself around me like a burial shroud.

I laugh.

Someone screams my name.

(but it’s not so much mine, not any more, or not for long, at least)

I turn and smile.

The seals are so easy, so pathetically easy to remember, like I was born knowing them, or maybe they’ve been carved into my skull-

(maybe they were)

_“Ōtsutsuki Kinshū: Jōshō!”_

(rise, o' monster that sleeps, _rise_ )

 

**LXXXIX.**

Madara appears, and I smile at him, though it’s not nearly as nice as the smile I gave to Obito-kun and Kakashi, and Minato-sensei.

He tries to stop me, but the roots bat him aside without a qualm. And I’m not nice about it, not like I am with Kakashi and Naruto.

(Madara always thought too highly of himself Zetsu is _mine_ )

I pluck his eyes from his skull, and they taste dead and decaying, but the power Madara’s soul brought with him still infuses them and, well. It’s something.

“Let us go, my darling Zetsu.”

_Always, Mother._

(he’s so good to me, even though he’s horribly confused, don’t worry my son _my will_ you’ve done well, things have just changed somewhat I have newer  _better_ priorities now)

I feel something in the very fabric of the air begin to shift and twist, begin to shake and turn, ponderous, thundering, inevitable-

I feel as though I can see the very fabric of the universe torn asunder, the workings behind it laid bare to my eyes.

The wheel of Samsara, the Voice inside me says with victorious understanding, and the universe _opens_ -

I see now.

 

**XC.**

_Souls call to souls, old ones especially._

_Rin’s father was a man who was born with eyes the color of the dead, who saw too much and cared too little, and stayed only to make sure the same eyes were not seen again in his own child. Rin’s mother was a woman who saw those that should not exist in her child’s eyes – the girl was not born with the eyes of the dead, but who says that was ever the_ only _curse of the Samsara?_

_The soul who was reborn in a statue trapped in the moon was a simple, simple child, but it only takes one death thwarted to craft a Samsara. Only one death, outside the grasp of a Shinigami, to give birth to a person who can rewrite the world in their wake, if they so want._

_(you slipped through the cracks, you found your way out, and you saw the universe open up for you, and the world will regret it forevermore)_

_A soul knocked askew, born into a statue wrought of mindless violence and helpless greed-_

_A soul whose blood awakened too late to stop the death that hungered for her since birth-_

_Is it any wonder they called to each other?_

_The child who had watched Kaguya lay waste on a television set dimensions away wondered how they could have ever exerted their will on such a creature._

_But those who have power over the Shinigami, over life and death and the universe itself-_

_One – just one! - is capable of calling the Shinigami._

_Imagine what_ two _can do._


	10. Wandering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter. I hope you all enjoyed it, and if you have any suggestions for other OC-Inserts you'd like to see, no matter how weird and out to left field they are, let me know. I'm always looking for fun new projects!

* * *

**XC.**

Uzumaki Naruto winds up marrying Hyūga Hinata, and it is a happy, loving marriage, one that becomes only stronger given time. He becomes the Nanadaime Hokage, widely beloved by his people and admired throughout the Elemental Countries, though everyone agrees that he wears just a bit too much orange. Kurama is one of his best friends, though he’s usually asleep, like most of the bijū are these days.

He has a son, named after his father, and a daughter, named after his wife’s mother. He loves them both, and unabashedly abuses his clones to spend time with them. His clones can do the paperwork, after all. He wants to be there to see his kids grow up.

( _love your children love your children love your children they are more important than all the hats in the world_ )

His friends are happy and healthy. Some have children, some do not. Some are married, some are not.

His brothers and sisters wander the world, but occasionally they stop by, and Naruto gets the chance to truly let loose. Sometimes his Mother comes by, and he has a moment to truly rest.

Uzumaki Naruto is a hero, and so are his brothers and sisters. He has a family.

That is all he has ever wanted.

 

**XCI.**

_There is something that looks like a woman wandering on the very fringes of civilization, shrouded in a shadow that may be alive. She hums to herself, she with her white hair and clear eyes and curving horns._

_She never stays for long, in the villages she visits._

_But occasionally, she goes and visits her family._

_Mother, they will say to her, and she will call them her children, and she will hold her grandchildren on her lap and smile and smile and smile._

_(three or four people will always vanish after she and the shadow in her sleeve have left, but her children don’t mind, because they love her)_

 

**XCII.**

Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura are married as well. It’s a decent marriage, and Sasuke is devoted to their children, if nothing else. He works in the Intelligence Department, but like his Hokage, he always manages to spend time with his children. Sakura works in the Hospital, and has well surpassed even her mentor’s reputation.

They have three daughters, only one with their mother’s pink hair, and two with his, and sometimes he wonders if he can see his brother’s face in his eldest’s calm, steady eyes.

( _treasure your family treasure the ones you love never let them go never let the world take them from you ever again_ )

He slits the throat of the man who tries to come for his daughters, then follows the trail back and kills them all.

Uchiha Sasuke doesn’t know if he’s happy.

But he has his children, and he has a village that is strong and secure, and he makes damn sure what happened to him - what happened to Naruto and so many others - will never happen to anyone else.

 

**XCIII.**

_She steps out of the tree and looks to the sky and calls herself a new name, because Rin doesn’t cut it and neither does Kaguya or that other name she once had, and drains a thousand souls so that her children – the broken abused jinchūriki who’ve been hated since birth and beyond – can walk again, walk with smiles and freedom. She promised them, after all._

_Gedō, she whispers her name to the sky, the sound like a thousand suns dying._

Heretical doctrine _, because isn’t that what her very existence is? Heresy against the gods, something that shouldn’t exist yet is writ into the very fabric of the universe itself, whispered in shallow gasps by the shadows of the world-_

 _(occasionally she gives herself a last name, because it isn’t right, to forget_ everything _-)_

_I made a promise, she whispers again, and she writes the world anew, cradling the body of the boy she hates and loves in her arms, her eyes clear glass, her horns curving._

_The Sharingan spins._

_The war ends._

_There is happiness, happiness that is not the delusion that others hoped for._

_(But there are also people who die, and many because of her, but in the grand scheme of things, they are nothing, not her children nor the boys who broke because of her nor the hero who saved the world – cannon fodder, nameless, she doesn’t care, and drinks their energy in with a smile because it’s going to save her children)_

 

**XCIV.**

Nii Yugito never marries, and spends most of her time wandering. She takes an apprentice, and introduces the child to Mother with a smile, and feels so foolishly, foolishly validated when the strange woman who loves her holds out her arms and Yugito’s apprentice goes willingly into them.

Mother is always good with children.

Yugito never spends a day longer in any village than she needs to, and the world is hers, the world is entirely hers, and that freedom is _drugging_.

Yagura spends his all of his time on lakes and waters and rivers, Rōshi with his mad-brained crush on the lava-slinging maniacal Mizukage, Han often right beside him, while Utakata wanders like a ghost more hermit than anyone, and Fū spends her time badgering Gaara and Naruto both, and Bee goes wandering with Utakata sometimes and has somehow managed to become a singer in the meantime.

_(I promised, didn’t I? To give my children the world, and it’s all yours, my darlings, all yours)_

They could go anywhere, do anything, but most of them stay near Mother, or Naruto.

Yugito only needs her loyalty to her brothers and sisters and to her Mother, and to no one else, and that’s even more drugging than the freedom.

She rips a Kumo-nin in half when he crosses her path and wonders if she should have done that, while Mother smiles behind her in tacit approval, even as Matatabi whispers inside her, but muted.

Nii Yugito washes the blood of the men she once used to know, but who always called her monster, off her hands and feels nothing but disgust for the blood under her nails.

They never came for her, and she never, ever forgives them-

-and Mother says that’s just fine.

 

**XCV.**

_People try to take the jinchūriki back, because that’s how humans work, even so soon after the war, even so soon after she promised to make everything_ better _for her children._

_But it takes only one demonstration for the world to understand just what she will do to protect her babies._

_She walks into the Raikage’s office, past his guards who see nothing, hear nothing, and walks back out with his head, and tells Darui that he is now the Raikage, and she smiles at him, very politely._

_I trust this will not happen ever again, Raikage-sama, she says, even more politely, and drops the former Raikage’s head at his feet._

_The Sharingan spins._

_No it won’t, Ōtsutsuki-sama, he replies, and the words taste like ashes and sadness and ancient regrets._

_Later, Kurotsuchi tells him this: they’re not worth it. No weapon is worth what that woman will do to us all if you get in her way. There is fear in her eyes, and he very carefully doesn’t ask how she became the Tsuchikage when last he heard her grandfather was still in perfect health._

_(But most of all, he agrees)_

 

**XCVI.**

Hatake Kakashi retires after Naruto becomes the Hokage, because he’s played his part and done his time and now he just wants to rest. He lives in a spacious house that he rarely stays in, because nine times out of ten he’s usually over at Gai’s, and it takes a long time for him to tell Gai that he should probably just move into his house because it’s more convenient.

He has wounds that are old but healing, and the memories no longer make him wonder if he should have ever gotten out of bed, and he no longer thinks that he is a murderer simply by existing.

And he has a daughter, one with white hair and brown eyes and a softly polite smile, and she has the Sharingan in both eyes, and they don’t speak of her mother.

_(She’ll be a Hatake, treat her well, call her Tomone, that was your mother’s name, right?)_

There are days when he stays inside and does not come out, when Naruto’s Mother comes to visit and Tomone goes out and says hello Zetsu how are you to the shadows on the walls and the shadows smile back and a woman with white hair croons lullabies in a voice he hears in the few nightmares he still has.

Hatake Kakashi has a good life.

He knows not to question it.

 

**XCVIII.**

_The white eyed not-a-woman visits a house on the edge of a lonely village. She wears a black tunic and pants and a purple apron style skirt, and she wears her white hair shorter than she normally does._

_The shadow in her sleeve hums along with her._

_There’s a caretaker who bows, trembling, when she sees the not-a-woman coming from her place in the garden._

_She walks past the woman – who knows better than most what exactly glides by her and shakes in the wake of that knowledge – and enters the house._

_It’s a simple house, delicately and prettily decorated. It suits._

_She walks down the hall, and into a room ornately decorated. Moons and fans cover the walls, with spiraling purple symbols that burn with chakra._

_There is a boy resting in the middle of the room, on a bed that is draped in silks and jewels, gold and silver. He wears black robes. His sleeping face is scarred, eyelids drooping over empty sockets._

_She sits beside him and begins to tell her prisoner about her week._

_(this is cage, a cage where a man no one remembers lays within, and she is his warden, but she loves him used to love him there’s no difference so she does it, to spare Kakashi-kun the pain make the cut clean and fast)_

_Because there’s no place for dead men in new beginnings, darling Obito._

 

**XCIX.**

Ōtsutsuki Gedō wanders endlessly, watching the stars and eating whatever she likes, traveling across the mountains and mapping them all with her eyes and mind. Occasionally she stops and whispers silently to people that aren’t there about the things she’s done, and occasionally she visits her children.

She doesn’t have a husband, she says, but she does have several loves.

 _(a boy in a cage and a boy she finally let free, be happy Kakashi-kun I’ll watch over him isn’t this what you wanted Obito to be with me_ forever _)_

She smiles very politely to the people she meets.

The man who serves her a drink in a bar tells her that he thinks he’s seen a spiral and a horned demon in his dreams and that it’s giving him headaches. She offers to take away the pain – I’m something of a medic-nin, she tells him, blushing even with bits of the former Raikage’s spine under her nails.

Later, people will wonder what happened to the bartender who lived in the tiny village for years, and maybe someone will say that he had been talking with a woman with white hair before he vanished – if they remember. It’s more than likely he’ll be forgotten to time and fickle minds and the lure of other, better bars.

Humans are wonderfully predictable.

Ōtsutsuki Gedō keeps walking and wandering, and there’s a man who is not a man at her side, and he thanks her for the meal while he wipes blood from his face.

She pats his cheek, and thinks about going to visit Rōshi and his darling Mizukage.

 

**C.**

_You made a promise, and you kept it. Your children are happy, they roam free if they wish, or they settle down and raise families, and they always, always, always call you Mother. Your friends are happy and healthy and loving and being loved, and that makes your heart sing._

_You have the ones you love, and you will never let them go, never ever again._

_The world is good and you made it good and it will stay that way._

_You cradle the boy you love and hate all at once in your arms as he twitches in a nightmare you placed him in to punish him, and you think this:_

Step three.

_I did it._

_I made it better than it was in the story._

_I made it **right**_.

(because it’s only a horror story if you’re on the wrong side of it, after all)


End file.
